From the September-December 2010 Issue
VISION OF THE WORLD
Demetrio and Jenny Canovas
It is quite normal for a missionary to start his life work in a fairly local situation, and not only normal but biblical. It was the Lord Himself who told His disciples to be His witnesses first in Jerusalem. However, that work may expand and reach ‘Judea’, ‘Samaria’ and the ‘uttermost’ parts of the earth.
We have experienced something of this, even if in a small manner, during more than 33 years of missionary service in Spain. Some of our friends may remember how we started by doing a church-planting work for some 15-16 years in the small town of Alcázar de San Juan. Almost at the same time, however, I started to get involved in literature work. First I started an evangelistic newspaper called The Herald, which was intended just for the surrounding area. Soon after it became a nationwide publication and later on it reached other countries, particularly Cuba, where for many years hundreds of Christians have received their copies with grateful hearts, very often one copy being shared by the whole congregation! Last year we celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Herald.
Something similar happened with our theological magazine New Reformation, which in a smaller way is reaching many pastors and other Christians, both in Spain and other countries of Europe and America. For nearly 17 years this magazine has provided both a doctrinal and an historical approach to the Christian faith that is lacking in many quarters.
AMERICAN SPANISH
However, the more substantial aspect of our literature production has to do with the book work. For more than 30 years I’ve been involved in various capacities with the work of EDITORIAL PEREGRINO. More than 160 titles have been published so far, mainly in the last 10 years or so, and most of them have been widely circulated, not only in Spain but also in America. It is a blessing that Spanish is spoken by more than 400 million people all over the world, and although the American Spanish has its own peculiarities we still understand each other! In fact, most of our books are now printed in the USA, partly because it is cheaper there and also because it facilitates the work of our distributors. The potential, therefore, is enormous.
...AND AFRICAN LANGUAGES
In more recent times a new development has taken place in the opportunity to publish books for Africa in African languages! We started publishing books for Malawi in the Chichewa language and later went on publishing books for Kenya in the Swahili language. We obviously haven’t got any knowledge of these languages, but we use the work of some African friends, who translate from English into their native language. These are some of the titles published so far:
Zinthu Zonse Zasandulika Zatsopano (All Things New) by Peter Jeffery Dhambi ni Hatari! (Sin is Serious) by Ralph Venning Je, Umezaliwa Mara Ya Pili? (Have You Been Born Again?) by J.C. Ryle Kutembea na Mungu (Walking with God) by J.C. Ryle Chikhululukiro (Forgiveness) by J.C. Ryle Ufafanuzi wa Injili ya Marko (Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Mark) by J.C. Ryle
We are in the process of preparing several more titles and we are blessed with a designer who is able to portray African scenery on the covers. This is not always easy and recently he depicted a man from the wrong part of Africa! So we had to change that, because although some Europeans think that all Africans look the same, it is obviously not so!
As I finish this article I’m not quite sure how our ‘vision of the world’ fits in the ‘Vision for Europe’—but I leave it for the editor of this magazine to decide!